CERT Alert: Handling a Providers' Allegation of Record Destruction
With the recent widespread flood damage to many communities in the Midwest, there may be cases where medical records are damaged, destroyed, or are temporarily unavailable to health care providers. This may greatly impact the ability of providers to respond to the CERT Contractor's requests for medical records.
In these situations, the CERT Documentation Contractor and the CERT Review Contractor will check various public and commercial sources to verify the facts surrounding claims that CERT-requested medical records were destroyed by a disaster. For CERT purposes, a "disaster" is defined as any natural or man-made catastrophe which causes damages of sufficient severity and magnitude to partially or completely destroy or delay access to medical records and associated documentation. Natural disasters would include hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, fires, mudslides, snowstorms, tsunamis. Man-made disasters would include terrorist attacks, bombings, floods caused by man-made actions, civil disorders, or explosions. When the CERT Documentation Contractor is contacted by a provider indicating that they cannot submit the requested medical records because they were destroyed by a disaster, the CDC will ask the provider to attest under penalty of perjury to the destruction of medical records.
A provider attestation form 
has been created for use in these instances. Providers who need to use this attestation form can print and fax the form to the CERT Documentation Contractor at 240-568-6222. This form is also available on the CERT Provider Website at: http://www.certcdc.com/certproviderportal
/attestationLetter.aspx 
For more information on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) response to the current situation, please visit their Website at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/emergency
/20_midwestflooding.asp .
Page Last Updated: Wednesday, 31-Dec-2008 10:49:22 CST
